Tel Aviv venture capital firm Swish Ventures has completed fundraising for its third fund, totaling $250 million, increasing its assets under management to approximately $800 million. Investors include Sequoia Capital, U.S. pension funds, U.S. university endowments, family offices, and Israeli institutional investors.

The new fund plans to invest in about 12 companies, with an average investment of approximately $20 million per deal, primarily focusing on seed and Series A rounds, typically co-leading or following another fund. The sectors covered include cybersecurity, tech infrastructure, physical AI, defense, industrial AI, and government technology. The firm also has an opportunity fund that can follow investments from seed to growth rounds.

Founder Omri Casspi is the first Israeli player to enter the NBA, playing for ten years and winning a championship with the Golden State Warriors. He initially managed about $36 million with Sheva Capital in 2022, and after merging with Swish in 2024, he raised about $63 million for a seed fund, followed by another $100 million opportunity fund by the end of 2025, increasing check sizes from $5 million to $7 million to an average of $10 million, and now to about $20 million in this round. Casspi remains the sole managing partner, with Ori Streichman joining in 2024.

The public portfolio includes about 20 companies with a total valuation exceeding $60 billion, of which 8 have become unicorns. A flagship project is Cognition: in early 2024, Casspi participated in the seed round after hosting co-founders at the Warriors' home, when it was valued at $150 million; three months ago, the company raised $1 billion at a valuation of $26 billion, with reports suggesting a new round could raise about $1 billion at a valuation of $47 billion. Eon was valued at $4 billion last December, Applied Compute, founded by former OpenAI personnel, was valued at $1.3 billion in April this year, Wonderful raised $550 million this week at a valuation of $5 billion, and Upwind raised $300 million at a valuation of $3.8 billion. The list also includes Glow, Tenzai, PointFive, Irregular, Long Lake, and Turnout.

In its early Sheva phase, the focus was on fintech and Web3, but after Swish was established, it narrowed down to cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and AI. Sequoia has been an anchor investor since the previous fund, and this round sees U.S. pension funds and university endowments entering, transforming the athlete-led single-brand fund into a configurable institutional asset.

Buyers are looking to enter the flow of Israeli security and AI projects as dollar LPs, while sellers are general partners converting past unicorn rates into the scale of new funds. The event-driven aspect comes from the valuation jumps of Cognition, Wonderful, and Upwind, with funding shifting from small follow-on checks to larger early concentrated positions. Beneficiaries are founders who can absorb $20 million seed checks and Swish's management fees, while pressured are local funds still writing small checks in the same sectors but unable to make it onto the co-lead list.

Source: Public Information